About the Piece

Five Refractions after a Prelude by Bach, for solo guitar

Composed in 2004 and revised in 2008, Five Refractions of a Prelude by Bach was premiered by the composer in April 2008 for the Classical Guitar Arts Society in Pittsburgh. The composer has written the following note:

“Five Refractions of a Prelude by Bach is a set of pieces based on J. S. Bach’s Prelude for Lute, BWV 999. Each of the five complementary pieces is – in its own way – based on the original Bach prelude, and they are all played attacca.

“The piece was originally conceived as a kind of ‘counterweight’ to another large solo guitar piece of mine, the Scordatura Suite, from 2003. While the Suite draws somewhat heavily on popular music influences and unorthodox tunings, FiveRefractions was intended to be a more ‘classical’ and formal kind of piece. I’m not sure exactly what this means, other than to say that while composing it I was fairly preoccupied with form and structure, to the extent that several of the movements (or portions thereof) can be literally ‘mapped’ against the original Bach prelude.

“Furthermore, I established and followed a fairly strict progression of process throughout the work with regards to how I chose to treat harmony and pitch material. This was a first for me, as I tend to approach composing without too many preconceived ideas about development, as I prefer to let these things come to me naturally while ‘in the moment.’ BWV 999 has always been a bit of a curiosity for me, as it is fairly famous in the guitar repertoire in spite of its relatively brief, 1.5-minute duration. Unlike most of Bach’s other preludes, which belong to dance suites or other collections of similar pieces, this one seems to be a solitary being, floating aimlessly amid the vast expanse of Bach’s output. This latter condition is what drew me to the idea of creating a much larger work around it – I wanted to expound upon certain ideas inherent in the original work, as well as ‘refract’ some of them through a more contemporary musical language. It is not intended that the listener necessarily be consciously aware of references to the Bach throughout the work (although they certainly abound), but perhaps rather to make more subconscious connections with fragments, gestures and opaque references to the prelude and Baroque style in general.”